Associate Professor Holly Lawford Smith has released an excellent video explainer of an extremely important landmark case to determine whether biological sex ought to take priority over gender identity.

Sall Grover, founder and owner of Giggle for Girls, excluded a male bodied application from her female only app and is now having to justify why in the Federal Court.

Tickle v Giggle is a case of gender identity v sex. Tickle believes that because he is legally female he should be included in all of the same services that any other legally female person is included in, and that he has been discriminated against in the case of the Giggle App on the basis of his gender identity. That is, he believes he is a woman and that he has been treated differently to ‘other women’ because he is trans.  

Sall believes she has the right to offer a service on the basis of biological sex, not legal sex and not gender identity.            

Tickle v Giggle will help to establish whether previously single-sex spaces, services or provisions can continue to be offered on the basis of biological sex or whether instead they must be offered to at least some biological males on the grounds those biological males have a legal sex of female or have a gender identity of woman or female. 

It is beyond comprehension that a male can be considered “legally female” considering the word female refers to gametes, chromosomes, skeletal structure, hormone production and the reproductive system. It is impossible for a male to become a female.

Males can appropriate female stereotypical feelings or appearances, but they cannot become female. Holly explains the conflict further in her video.

Women should not have to prove some detriment in order for sex to take priority over gender identity when both are present. Rather, the default assumption should be that services are offered on the basis of sex, not gender identity, so a transwoman would have to make the case for an exemption to sex-based exclusion, rather than women’s services having to justify for excluding on the basis of gender identity.

Women only services should have the right to exclude all males regardless of the female attributes those males might have.

This case will have far reaching impacts on all women in Australia.